Pawn’s Gambit (34 page)

“No, sir.” Grond was positive. “At least, not on my watch. Hasn't even gotten within four meters. All she's done is smile.”

Mentally, Quillan shook his head. Such a lot of fuss and bother over so very little.

If it was, indeed, a lot of fuss and bother. “Go get her,” he ordered, stepping to one of the chairs beside the curved windows and sitting down.

A minute later she was standing in front of him. “Yes, sir?” she asked tentatively.

For a moment Quillan just gazed up at her. Sometimes letting an underling squirm under a direct glare could squeeze out a glimpse of a guilty conscience.

But she just stood there, looking puzzled. “I understand you've been trying to meet my nephew,” he said.

She frowned a bit harder. “Your nephew, sir?”

“The boy in the wheelchair,” Quillan amplified. “Recovering from a serious accident. Weren't you told when you arrived here that if you saw him you weren't to speak to him?”

“Yes, sir, I was,” she said. “But I haven't spoken to him.”

“You've smiled at him,” Quillan said, making the words an accusation.

Again, nothing but more puzzlement. “I smile at everyone,” she protested, her face looking more mouse-like than ever. “I was just trying to be friendly.”

“I don't want you to be friendly,” Quillan said firmly. “Not to him. The psychological aspects of the accident have been far more severe than even the physical damage. He needs time to work it all through.”

“I understand, sir,” she said. “But …”

“But?” Quillan echoed, making the word a challenge.

“Wouldn't it be better for him to mix with other people?” she asked, the words coming out in a rush. “To see that he can be accepted just like he is?”

Quillan raised his eyebrows. “Are you telling me that my thousand-dollar-an-hour psychologists don't know what they're talking about?” he asked pointedly.

She actually winced. “No, sir,” she said in a low voice.

“Good,” Quillan said. “I would hate to think I'd been wasting all that money when an unschooled cleaning woman had better advice to give. You're to stay away from him. You're not to talk to him, or look at him. You're especially not to smile at him. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, bobbing her head.

“Good,” Quillan said. “Then get back to work.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again. In that peculiar gait people have when they're trying not to look like they're hurrying, she hurried away.

Grond stepped to his side. “Sir?”

“I don't know,” Quillan said thoughtfully. “She seems such a pathetic specimen to be distracting our terminal.”

Abruptly, he came to a decision. “Give her a month's severance and get her out of the house,” he said, standing up. “Right now. Tell her we'll collect her things from her room and send them on to her at the Ares Hiltonia—set up a room there for her. You pack her bags yourself, and make sure to look everything over carefully while you do.”

“Yes, sir,” Grond said. “What exactly am I looking for?”

“Anything that might suggest she's more than the waste of skin she appears,” Quillan said. “A camera, perhaps. Nothing electronic gets into this house that I don't know about, but it's possible to make a purely mechanical camera.”

“If there's anything there, I'll find it,” Grond promised. “You want her
just
out of the house?”

Quillan rubbed his lower lip as he gazed across at the girl's back. Grond was right. She was almost certainly harmless; but on the other hand, Rey was a multi-million-dollar investment. There was no point in taking the risk. “You just give her that month's severance,” he said. “I'll call Bondonavich and have him get whoever handled Estevez to take care of her more permanently.”

Grond's lumpy forehead wrinkled. “You're going to have
Rey
send the order for her to disappear?”

“TabRasa is a wonderful invention,” Quillan reminded him. “You just get her out of my house.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hunching his shoulders once, Grond headed across the solarium. Giving the girl one last look, Quillan headed for the door.

No, Rey wouldn't like it. Not at all. But by the time he realized what was going on, the call would be in progress and there would be nothing he could do about it.

And the boy would certainly get over it. TabRasa was indeed a wonderful invention.

She wasn't in the library. She wasn't in the main hallway, either, or the kitchen, or the dining room.

Where could she be?

Sitting in the middle of the hallway, Rey looked around him at the various directions he could go, his heart pounding uncomfortably. He wasn't even supposed to be down here alone, never mind giving himself a tour of the house this way. So far the only servants he'd seen were all at a distance, and as usual none of them had given him a second glance. But sooner or later, if he kept at this, he was bound to bump squarely into someone.

And then what? Would he compound his disobedience by asking where Susan was?

At this point he didn't really know what he would do. All he knew was that he needed to find her. Turning the chair around, he headed down the main hallway. Somewhere back here, he had heard, was a stairway that led down to the servants' quarters.

He had just rounded a corner off the main hallway when an older man emerged from the theater room. “Rey!” he said with surprise. “What are you doing here?”

Rey froze.
Someon
e was talking to
him
! And not just someone, but a man he'd never seen before in his life. Some guest of Mr. Quillan's?

But whether or not Rey knew who he was, it was clear he knew who Rey was. “You're not supposed to down here alone,” the man growled, striding toward him. “Where's your caretaker?”

“I—I don't know,” Rey managed. “He's not—”

“Get yourself upstairs,” the man snapped. “Right now.”

“Yes, sir,” Rey said automatically. “Chair—”

He stopped short as a face suddenly seemed to appear before his eyes, pushing aside his mental picture of Susan. “Yes, I'll get him,” he murmured in response to the silent call, pressing the signal button underneath his chair's armrest.

“What is it, a call?” the man asked, glancing around. “Come on, we'd better get you to his office.”

“He says it's very important,” Rey murmured. “Vitally important.”

“What's vitally important?” Mr. Quillan's voice came from somewhere behind him.

The man looked up over Rey's shoulder. “He's got a call from someone,” he said. “I thought you said he's not supposed to be down here alone.”

“He's not,” Mr. Quillan said grimly, coming around the chair into Rey's line of sight and glaring down at him. “Rey, what are you doing here?”

“Vitally important,” Rey repeated. “Must talk to you. Now.”

“Damn,” Mr. Quillan muttered. He glanced around, gestured toward the door across from the theater room. “Chair: Conference Room One. It's secure enough,” he added to the other man as the chair started rolling, “and faster than getting him upstairs to the office. This just better be
damn
urgent.”

A minute later they were in the conference room. Mr. Quillan checked the monitors built into the table, then dropped into one of the chairs. “All right, we're secure,” he said. “This is Quillan. Who is this?”

As if it were being carried down a long hollow tube, Rey heard a man's voice in the distance.
This is McCade
.

“This is McCade,” he repeated.

We've got a problem.

“We've got a problem,” Rey echoed.

Or rather, you do. I've just learned Enforcement has planted a spy on you—

“Or rather, you do,” Rey said. “I've just learned Enforcement has planted a spy on you—”

Named Susan Baker.

“Named Susan Ba—”

Abruptly, Rey faltered, her face springing into sharp new focus in front of his eyes. Susan Baker?
Susan
?

“What?” Mr. Quillan snapped, bounding up out of his chair. “Susan
what
?”

“Baker,” Rey stammered. “I—Mr. Quillan—”

But the other wasn't even listening. “Grond!” he shouted into his remote as he sprinted toward the door. “Stop her! Don't let her get out of the house!”

He slammed the door open and was gone.
What's happening?
the voice echoed through Rey's mind.

Rey didn't answer. Swiveling his chair around, he started toward the door.

A hand grabbed at his shoulder. “No you don't,” the other man bit out. “Where do you think you're—?”

The last word came out in a strangled gasp as Rey slammed his elbow with all the strength he could manage into the man's abdomen. Maneuvering the chair around the table and potted trees, he rolled out the door.

They were all there, down by the bend in the hallway: Quillan, Grond, and Susan. Grond had a grip on Susan's arm, holding it bent behind her back. Her face—that wonderful, kind face—was twisted almost beyond recognition with pain and fear.

“Stop!” Rey shouted. Or at least, he tried to shout. Instead, the words came out as barely a squeak. Susan's eyes flicked to Rey's face, a wordless plea there …

And with a sudden blaze of anger, Rey sent the chair rolling toward the trio at full speed. Words weren't going to stop Grond now, he knew. From somewhere in the distance he could hear the warbling of some kind of alarm—

And then, to his astonishment, five men charged into view around the corner of the hallway. Grond barely had time to snap a warning before three of them leaped at him, wrenching Susan's arm out of his grip and wrestling him to the floor. One of the others pushed warningly at Quillan's chest, while the last hurriedly pulled Susan away from the confusion. “You all right?” Rey heard him ask.

“I'm fine,” she breathed, looking over at Rey again. “There's Rey,” she added.

“Right,” the man said briskly, beckoning Rey toward him. “Rey? Come on over.”

Rey let the chair coast to a halt where he was, staring at them in confusion. Did Susan know these people? What were they doing here? Who were they? “It's all right, Rey,” Susan called, smiling weakly as she rubbed her arm. “Don't worry. These are the good guys.”

Quillan snorted loudly. “And they'd better enjoy themselves while they can,” he said. “You've leaned way over the mark with this one, Winslow.
Way
over. By this time tomorrow you'll be on suspension, pending charges of gross misconduct.”

“No, I don't think so,” the man beside Susan—Winslow—said calmly. A dozen more men appeared around the corner, all of them dressed in police uniforms, and strode purposefully past Rey. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw them start checking the rooms. “Come on, Rey, join the party,” Winslow added. “It's all over. Really.”

Hesitantly, Rey nudged the chair forward. “Let's run through the formalities, shall we?” Winslow said, turning his attention back to Quillan. “Archer Quillan, you're under arrest for stock manipulation, illegal business practices—”

He paused dramatically. “
And
obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact in the murder of Securities Enforcement agent Juan Estevez.”

Quillan snorted again. “And you'll be awaiting a full psychiatric examination on top of it,” he said scornfully. “You couldn't make charges like that stick to the floor.”

Winslow smiled. “You might be surprised,” he said. “You see, we finally have a witness to all this sludge-water manipulation you and your trillionaire buddies have been indulging in. Someone who can quote your words exactly. Yours,
and
Jonathan McCade's,
and
Sergei Bondonavich's. Everything you've said on your cozy little Old-Boy Network for the past month, in fact.”

“You
are
insane,” Quillan insisted, looking at Susan and then Rey. “There's not a thing either of them can tell you. I've made sure of that.”

“Who said I was talking about either of them?” Winslow countered, shifting his eyes toward the corner. “Julia?” he called, raising his voice. “It's safe—come on in.”

He looked back at Quillan. “We knew we couldn't get anything from the inside,” he said. “Between TabRasa and electronic countermeasures, you had all those bases covered.

“And so we arranged for you to deliver the information
outside
the house. To us.”

“You're bluffing,” Quillan said flatly. “Nothing has left this house.”

“Ah, but it has,” Winslow said. “We figured that with all this paranoid secrecy, you'd probably have Rey locked away someplace where he would be starved for human contact. So we provided him with a friendly face. A face that, hopefully, he would always have hovering at the edges of his mind.”

“A pathetic face,” Quillan said contemptuously, looking at Susan.

“In your opinion,” Winslow said. “But obviously not in Rey's. Tell me, Quillan; have you ever heard of a carbon copy?”

Quillan frowned. “A what?”

“A carbon copy,” Winslow repeated. “That's an out-of-date term for a duplicate you make of a communication to send elsewhere. That's basically what we were getting.”

Quillan was looking at the man as if he were crazy. “What in the System are you talking about?” he demanded. “There aren't any copies.”

“That's where you're wrong.” Winslow gestured at Susan. “Meet Enforcement Agent Trainee Susan Converse.”

And then, from around the corner, rolled another wheelchair. A wheelchair just like Rey's. A wheelchair holding a young woman.